London based Freelance Digital Designer at pratas.co Occasional writer.

Jun 30, 2015

I’m not a UX Designer

And probably, neither are you.

Hi. My name is António. I like long walks by the beach and bicycle rides in sunny summer days. I’m a Designer, an Art Director, a Web Designer, a UI Designer, heck, even mobile. But I’m not a UX designer.

Sure, I’ve read the books, the tutorials, the posts and the tips and tricks. I know (some of) the techniques, the objectives of the process, the principles. I even designed some wireframes and done some user interviews for my own projects. Overall, I feel like I have a good understanding of what User Experience is all about, but the fact is, I’m not a UX Designer.

Those, are professionals who solely studied for that purpose. People who have major experience doing this work, people who know how to streamline processes, define relevant user journeys, identify all personas, choose what kind of approach is best for each project. People who do this all the time and for a living, who have several hours of work under their belts, and with that experience, know better than you, what you should do.

I know, you feel confident about your job, your skills. You can design wireframes, mockups, pixel perfect layouts, code them in HTML, integrate them in some CMS system and even publish them online. You’re Creative Director, Art Director, Creative Technologist, Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer and QA. You control the whole process, you’re web design god, if there was such a thing. I get it, I really do. And that’s great, for smaller projects, for personal websites, for even some commercial and client work. And that makes you a very flexible and knowledgeable designer (if that’s what we might call you), but the reality is, you can’t always do everything yourself. And you shouldn’t.

So no, I’m not a UX Designer, and I bet that more than 50% of the people who say they are in their resumes, twitter bios, sidebar descriptions, about section, aren’t either.